Tournaments are often arranged at a casino to create an exciting activity to drive attendance and revenue for the casino. A tournament is a group function wherein several players pay a set amount of money to join a tournament. These entry fees are usually manually collected from the players and typically are used to fund a prize pool that is paid out to one or more tournament winners. The casino will usually retain a percentage of the entry fees running the tournament. The gaming devices used for the tournament are those normally used on the casino floor, but those which have been re-configured so that upon the issuance of a “start” command, the devices allow the players to play as fast as they can without requiring any funds to be deposited during tournament play. Percentage options in the re-configured gaming machines are standardized before play of the tournament. Most players start with the same amount of credits. The wins, or “points” are accumulated, held and displayed by each machine. At the end of a specific period of time, a “stop” command is sent to all of the gaming machines participating in the tournament. The gaming machines then become disabled. The winner is usually a person having the highest accumulated score of win points obtained during the tournament session. In most tournaments the winner takes the entire pot.
Currently, tournaments must be run on the aforementioned specially-configured gaming machines, which are required to be located in a special area in a casino floor or a separate room. At least one person is required as a tournament administrator and/or persons who monitor and run the tournament. The tournament setup is configured, tested, and certified as being equal in every respect on each gaming machine so that all players have an equal chance to win. The gaming machines used for the tournaments are carefully selected from the gaming machines normally used in the casino. The selected gaming machines are then enabled for tournament players to play at a defined “start” time, and they are disabled at a tournament “end” time. A tournament administrator is responsible for acquiring the score from each gaming machine. A winner is orally announced or otherwise shown on a display device.
Thus, in current tournaments, there is a requirement to collect tournament fees manually, dedicate a portion or room in the casino for the tournament location, and select and specially configure gaming machines for re-location to the tournament location. Further, there is a specific start and end time for the tournament, during which all tournament play is required to start and complete. Finally, the tournament scores are fetched manually. All of these requirements limit the opportunity of the general public to access the tournament. Further, they make the tournament costly to conduct on the part of the gaming establishment as it must provide tournament hosts or administrators, dedicate certain machines to tournament use, and provide a suitable casino area or room in order to conduct the tournament.
Some prior art systems purportedly make tournament play more available and purportedly simplify the host establishment's monitoring requirements to reduce overhead expense. However, those systems still require participating gaming machines to all be a similar type and have the same win percentage (i.e., have standardized parameters before tournament play). All gaming machines participate in the tournament for the same period of time and must to be dedicated to the tournament during the duration of the tournament.
Further, the tournament close rate, the turnover rate, or the tournament velocity rate are all terms describing a problematic area in tournament design. This is a constant issue that needs to be considered by the tournament game administrators. Tournament operators must carefully choose the number and size of tournaments available for a player so as to create what is called tournament velocity or turnover rate. If there are too many tournaments for the player community available, then the tournament velocity is too little, and player dissatisfaction occurs. If there are too few tournaments for the players, then a player may post a score in all his desired ones and may not have a place to spend any more tournament entry fees until the tournaments close. An advantage of closing tournaments quickly is that it gives the winning players more money to play even more tournaments or other types of games.
One technique used by casinos to generate revenue and customer interest by hosting slot tournament events is called roped-off floor tournaments. A slot tournament is executed in a fair manner, where each player has the same initial conditions, and the winner is determined by the player that has accrued the most points, quickest to reach a threshold, or other criteria that is the result of gaming machine game play. This type of tournament is run today in most casinos using manual processes.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide a tournament system and method without the need to dedicate a separate part of a casino floor, limit the duration of the tournament, specifically configure gaming machines of the same type and move them to the tournament area, and provide the amount of personnel typically needed to conduct a tournament. Accordingly, in light of the discussion above, those skilled in the art would recognize the need for a system that is capable of providing on-going tournament play over a broad area and over a broad spectrum of gaming machine types.